


In the Ruins of the Kingdom

by TheArchein



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-10-25 23:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20732564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchein/pseuds/TheArchein
Summary: Trekking through perilous plains and bitter wastelands, Ehst, child of Hallownest's diaspora, embarks on pilgrimage to retrieve the belongings of his kinfolk's House in the heart of a drowned city. Subject to the harsh realities of a once friendly land, the Hallowbug seeks more than mere heirlooms: answers, will Ehst search, from the lost kingdom and its betrayer's fate.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A minute writing exercise to both help me better my literary skills and flesh out a character. Read to your heart's content if you so choose!

**Requiem for the Deserting King**

_A kingdom’s seared pillars, scorched by potent Foe_

_Was malice its killer, or divine barratry its blow?_

_Coward you flew—shred your land’s last sinew_

_The ultimate price? That we suffer your vice._

_To take with a Beast? An adulterous feast?_

_No worship transpires to God of Common Desires._

_The whispers, they grow_

_They tarnish that glow._

_Flee from your sin_

_Oh traitor of kin._

_Blessed be Xero, hero of valiance_

_Cherished be Ogrim, what ironic dalliance._

_Let the Pale light die with his kingdom._

_A Wyrm infernal_

_No Kingdom eternal_

. 

Black digits gripped the calamus of the quill, strokes of ink sliding delicately upon the parchment of silk and cloth. Precise was each turn of his wrist, the push and pull of his fingers crafting a scathing, vitriolic rebuke upon the pure, delicate surface. Scraps of cloth littered his pointed feet, sections of blotched and scribbled lines tossed by the faint blow of the wind. Calculated was the rhythm of each line, the Hallowbug unsatisfied until each word flowed like a poisoned stream: smooth, yet deathly, nevertheless. Inspired was he by Monomon’s Elegy, he thought to craft a satire of his own. A biting elegy yes—but not for Hallownest.

Hunched over was the bug, head craned towards the smooth, rounded stones below him. A puff of wind tossed an edge of his draping garb against the parchment, the insect muttering at this mild inconvenience. Gripping the cloth, he scrutinizes the worn fabric. Frayed were minute sections of the faded, Byzantium-hued textile. In better condition were the center’s folds to its coattails. The surcoat’s base was lined with tattered fringes, specks of sediment crusting their peripheries. Nicer days had his robe-like dress seen, one of the several victims to this wasteland’s elements.

From the North had he traveled, each weary step scraping the sandy dirt beneath his tipped, black feet. A delicate breeze flowed southward. Stark was its contrast to the howling winds that pounded the northbound, fleeing bugs of The Exodus. Devastating had the trek been out of Hallownest, its evidence littered within the earth. The corpses not ravaged by festering predators laid half buried, sand coating their shells and torn garments. A generation past and the denizens of the former Kingdom still sang their lament, the wind echoing through the hollowed bodies of the unfortunate many.

To think, beyond the dusted winds and plains of death, a city of rain could exist—what outlandish a notion did it sound. Yet even with the droughted conditions of the distant wastelands, with sparse rains that barely tickled the soil, hope did he harbor in the spoken dreams of the past. Lavish had his elders lived within the City’s towers, food a second-hand thought. Only a taste of such luxury did his parents receive, the two tolls of death crushing what civilization they knew.

And he?

Born of the sands, a child of refuge. Where swathes of family perished, he survived—brought into a world of apocalypse. He knew naught but the dark skies and the dry earth, an erudite House brought to squander. Society did form however, even in the daily struggle for life. Built was it by the hundreds who continued, on the remains of the perished thousands. Still clung to forgotten fantasies did his folk cherish the name of their House. He'd learned the arts in tandem with the nail: poet was he, hunter-forager too. Even his sleek weapon and the style of its user hearkened to that lost era, of nobility and grace sheltered from a barbarous world.

He had become, in essence, an artificial relic of that past. To his folk, a promise was he to a brighter future where only darkness held root. Preserved in him did they put their culture, preserved like the victims upon his lengthy trek. Had he been sent, or was it mere curiosity? A key from his aged grandmother did he carry in the cloth sack upon his back, a quest to seek out their deserted domicile. Nestled was the bronze gift against parchment and quill, swathes he would dedicate in transcribing the fate of his people: the life before; the illness; _the traitor._

Black fingers clenched the garb’s edge, a seething exhale whistling from below his cream-white mask. His left hand parted the folds of his mantle-like cloak, metallic scratches emanating from his shoulder’s pauldron. Digits pressed against his shell’s cheek, firmly dug to alleviate the weariness of the day. Up did his palm slide against the reverse, tear-drop shaped mask to its triumvirate of horns. It slipped between the gap of the dominant meso-spike and a slimmer, exterior one. Nary an ounce of food had his mouth tasted in the past day: sleep might suffice to kill the hungering crave.

Hollow eyes pierced a damning stare unto the parchment laid upon his lap. One line more was all that was needed, a signature to his heretical hymn. Down laid his rubbing palm. Down to his sternum, a thumb rested against his gray-blue brooch. Its rub polished the blemished stone, an inscribed crest etched in its smoothed surface. The quill’s tip touched silk and cloth, a resolve written to his requiem.

\- _Ehst, House of the Endemons under Lurien’s Watch_


	2. To the Promised Land

Ehst awoke with gasping breaths, hand clambering for his weapon. Upright did his torso lift, his heart racing from the post-sleep daze. His mask cocked to the left, promptly then to the right. Alone was he, his only company the faintly howling wind. Body drooping back, the traveler gave a shaky exhale, his right hand clutched at the rapier against his leg.

Never did he consider himself braver than his peers. He idolized his parents’ valor: stripped of possessions in their flight, they persisted where others perished. Far more perilous had it been reforming society than sustaining its existence.

Perhaps he was sent out for ideological differences. The older folk idolized the king, an uncanny worship for a leader whose witness so few did bare. Their sons and daughters? Less enthralled were they in notions of a king whose light they tasted naught for a brief minute. Yet still, though his parents and their generation whispered uncertainty, hope did many still have in the old kingdom.

Not him.

Disillusioned was he in any thought of the monarchy. Each question about the suffering they sustained was hushed, each utterance about the king chided as blasphemy. It only drew his ire: where was his pale glory in this hellscape?

Poetry certainly fit his taste. He could craft their preserved, aristocratic language in scathing sonnets and vitriolic verses. His fellows seemed to tolerate when he worked with his sword and wrote with his pen, not when he spoke from his mask.

In time he had learned to silence himself, alleviating any fears his House held of ostracization.

Peculiar was it that they cared so deeply of their image. They hunted and killed; their precious robes often laid spattered with the blood of game. Yet still, a desire for mental and social cleanliness never escaped this post-civilization’s culture. Even keeping to himself, an aura of impurity dangled over his horns in the eyes of the more powerful. Conformity was key.

Perhaps this was a lesson. Sent to the vestiges of the quondam kingdom to seek a contrived image of the past. “Learn the truth!” an elder scolded him, the sentiment not lost on those keenly aware of Ehst’s beliefs—or his lack of them thereof. Still his House cherished him, a desire perhaps to see “maturity” come from such an expedition.

Perhaps this was their manner of polishing their prized, yet “dirtied” gem.

He did find pleasure in the concept of an odyssey. Not to appease the supercilious lot, certainly. But there was a truth he sought to learn—that of the kingdom. He assumed his voyage would act as a test of the kingdom’s proverbial—and literal—waters. Examine if the detriment of the Illness still scourged the paths of Hallownest.

If he was lost, then so be it: relief would it give to their cultist ways.

A hero he was not, yet he held the skills deemed necessary enough to traverse the decrepit path. Quickly had he needed to adapt to a solitary lifestyle—no company of others offered refuge in this barren land. His quill did, however, give sanity where the beating of sands drained at his mind.

Ehst arose, his stomach churning with feverish yearning.

“So uncouth,” did he mutter towards it, a subtle smile at his mimicry of those elite such a distance away.

The tip of his rapier pierced the ground, giving leverage to his standing figure. Nary did it bend, rigid in its design to withstand the rust of time. It served well: simple was it in appearance, yet far more useful did it serve to the excessively ornate, decorative arms of the old elite.

With a tug, his nail slipped back from the earth, a cloud of dust tossed away. To his side did the weapon return, the steel of the nail sliding against the dusted, silver-white armor adorning his torso. His fingers gripped the edges of his cloak, shifting the insides of each fold together. Hidden was his body within the robe-like appearance his cloak formed, the clothing a harbor for his skin against the elements.

The sounds of feral snarling chittered through the wind. At once did Ehst shift towards the lee of the nearby mound of rock, shell, and earth. A peer over revealed nothing: distant were the creatures scavenging through dust. The deduction offered no solace—little rest would he attain in the perilous lands. A silent twist of his figure preceded his departure, the mind-burdened insect once more taking to the domain of the primal.

Food would have to wait, lest he become it.

.

Fortune seemed a kind mistress to the wanderer. Within the sole hand protruding from his cloak laid a half-consumed egg, its glossy albumen seeping over the soft chorion. A wayward breeze had unearthed several dozens of the spherical pearls, the traveler swiping what few had not been taken by the land’s scavengers. Perhaps he too had grown closer to his feral counterparts.

Yet the wipe of his hand’s back against the bottom of his mask reflected how significant the idiosyncrasies between the feral and the civilized remained. Barbaric would it be allowing globs of the fluid-like food to cling against his chin, regardless of the distance from the society upholding said norms.

A small stock had he accrued. Nestled were the foodstuffs in his sack, segregated from his writings. Long enough would they last. Little did he mind their dull flavor: the protein offered the sustenance he dearly required.

Ehst slipped his fingers back behind his clothing, once more tugging the vestment close to his form.

Monotonous was the journey. Drab was the landscape. The persistent whistle of winds was broken only by the occasional chitter of feral insects. More inhospitable had it become the deeper he ventured into this desert. Yet, ironically enough, hope had come to him through a familiar symbol: the crest of the king.

The traveler paced towards the pole, staring towards its decorative tip. How similar it was to those that dotted his village. A mark of the wastes’ end: the exodus had convinced itself that in the midst of a barren land, their commune was the final enclave of civilized life. Yet here he stood, countless hours passed, and before him lied the same steel stake.

Had he arrived?

The clouds of dust had certainly increased, as did the carcasses of migrants centuries old. Yet nowhere was the barrier to be seen: the mounds of earth encircling the kingdom. Nor had he discovered the masked statues—pillars dividing the lands of the wild and the tamed. Perhaps they had withered away with the kingdom.

On did the wayfarer press. The winds howled their beckoning call; more had to lie ahead.

The route of the émigrés took a different approach than most travel in to and out of Hallowest. The western cliffs that harbored the heart of the kingdom’s transport—the Stags—carried with it the burning illness to the furthest corners of the land. Better was it to march the more perilous track north, void of footpaths, void of Plague. The luxury of entering Hallownest through the common path was thus, in turn, snuffed out for the trekking bug.

Dirtied gusts blew harshly against the tightly held fabric, swathes of dirt battering at the holes of his mask. In the span of a few thousand nails’ lengths, the whispering winds had manifested screeching gales. A struggled breath uttered from Ehst; vision focused on the ground below in a futile attempt to diminish the current’s flurry. How many before had become lost in the obscuring streams of sand, part of the dust that coated his pauldrons? He refused to entertain the thought of joining them. His kind had suffered this journey—so would he.

To an abrupt halt did he come, his mask thumping against a smooth, cold rock before him. A questioning utterance vibrated in his throat; his gaze cocked upwards from the coarse earth below. Blistering wind had cooled to a faint howl, the wanderer only now perceiving his surrounding environment. Before him towered a wall of fossilized shells, a great gate of egg-shaped stones, conglomerates of fused sandstone, shale, and ancient carapaces. Awe gripped the insect, mask pointed towards the steep heavens the mound climbed.

This was it.

Like small pins were the king’s steel markers placed upon the mound, haphazardly strewn about. No proper path came from them, yet their signal was evident enough: this was the end of the wasteland’s hold. Beyond the imposing barrier would his answers lie. Like a soft coo did the breeze whistle around him, the wind itself whispering to the wayward traveler:

_‘Ascend.’_

Less fearsome was the climb than the arduous journey. Though untrained in scaling such uphill terrain, a manageable path from rock to rock was mentally plotted inside Ehst’s head. A brush with death from a near-missed grip forced him to take a slower, more steady approach. The crevices and jutted rocks offered several stops of respite, the wanderer often pausing to dispatch a Vengefly encroaching too close for his taste. Rarely had he ever encountered one in his distance from Hallownest, yet not long had it taken to verify the elders’ tales of their pestering nature.

Keeled over panting was the voyager, his palms planted upon the cool, dusted surface of the petrified shell below him. His fingers clenched tight, tugging at the loose soil. At its apex had he climbed; his body worn from strenuous labor it took to merely continue. He heaved a few dusty coughs against the ground. Yet his eyes kept forwards, into the crater of the barrier, unflinching. Had delusion overcome him, onset from his fatigue? In the midst of the darkness, faint, glowing dots illuminated paths towards one divergent center: a village.

“Impossible.”

Decades upon decades, if not centuries had passed from the kingdom’s fall. More likely was it his body needed rest, the faint glow and the subtle silhouettes of structures nothing more than mere mirages in a sea of darkness. The concept did not, however, seem to translate to his feet. With a struggle did Ehst arise once more, a step pulling his skeptical body forwards. The wind would carry him, as it did the course of his passage. Off to the small, round buildings would he go, to a village whose existence the Illness should have killed. Off to the dim glow of the distant pale lights. Off to Hallownest.


End file.
